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Solidarity against online harassment

One of our colleagues has been the target of a sustained campaign of harassment for the past several months. We have decided to publish this statement to publicly declare our support for her, for every member of our organization, and for every member of our community who experiences this harassment. She is not alone and her experience has catalyzed us to action. This statement is a start.

The Tor Project works to create ways to bypass censorship and ensure anonymity on the Internet. Our software is used by journalists, human rights defenders, members of law enforcement, diplomatic officials, and many others. We do high-profile work, and over the past years, many of us have been the targets of online harassment. The current incidents come at a time when suspicion, slander, and threats are endemic to the online world. They create an environment where the malicious feel safe and the misguided feel justified in striking out online with a thousand blows. Under such attacks, many people have suffered — especially women who speak up online. Women who work on Tor are targeted, degraded, minimized and endure serious, frightening threats.

This is the status quo for a large part of the internet. We will not accept it.

We work on anonymity technology because we believe in empowering people. This empowerment is the beginning and a means, not the end of the discussion. Each person who has power to speak freely on the net also has the power to hurt and harm. Merely because one is free to say a thing does not mean that it should be tolerated or considered reasonable. Our commitment to building and promoting strong anonymity technology is absolute. We have decided that it is not enough for us to work to protect the world from snoops and censors; we must also stand up to protect one another from harassment.

It's true that we ourselves are far from perfect. Some of us have written thoughtless things about members of our own community, have judged prematurely, or conflated an idea we hated with the person holding it. Therefore, in categorically condemning the urge to harass, we mean categorically: we will neither tolerate it in others, nor will we accept it among ourselves. We are dedicated to both protecting our employees and colleagues from violence, and trying to foster more positive and mindful behavior online ourselves.

Further, we will no longer hold back out of fear or uncertainty from an opportunity to defend a member of our community online. We write tools to provide online freedom but we don't endorse online or offline abuse. Similarly, in the offline world, we support freedom of speech but we oppose the abuse and harassment of women and others. We know that online harassment is one small piece of the larger struggle that women, people of color, and others face against sexism, racism, homophobia and other bigotry.

This declaration is not the last word, but a beginning: We will not tolerate harassment of our people. We are working within our community to devise ways to concretely support people who suffer from online harassment; this statement is part of that discussion. We hope it will contribute to the larger public conversation about online harassment and we encourage other organizations to sign on to it or write one of their own.

>With anonymity, sadly, often we also get people doing and saying things that they'd never do in person.
I don't think that's a sad thing at all. People should be given the ability to say things that they otherwise would not feel comfortable doing. In Tor's case, it's a win-win situation. It allows people to avoid censorship, while simultaneously giving people the tools they need to nullify online harassment.

>Speaking anonymously is a mechanism to protect yourself against nation-state harassment (or worse).
That is not entirely true. Speaking anonymously is also about protecting against an adversarial society, one in which your views make you a target for harassment, discrimination, or even physical harm. I have a feeling you would instantly do a 180 if asked if a victim of abuse should have to decry their abuse, using their real name instead of doing so anonymously. Anonymity cannot, and should not, be selectively dealt out only to those that you (or any given social climate's collective opinion) label as victims.

>If you've got a beef with any of those things or whatever else, write a blog post, under your real name, and argue your case with precision.
A world where that can be done under your real name safely is a world where Tor is obsolete. We do not live in such a place yet. The only times at which this would be safe is if the point you are arguing is socially accepted by a critical mass of people.

It is socially acceptable to call a person who is advocating murder for profit despicable and disgusting, but it is not socially acceptable to call a person who is fat (or of a different political view, or a different sexuality, etc) the same. Both of these are harassment, but the average person might not agree because to them, "harassment" is only harassment if it is against a person they align with, and I find that very disappointing. I think that people should be free to say anything to people anonymously, while the "target" should also be free to protect themselves with tools like Tor.

We at Take Back the Tech! are thrilled to see this very powerful statement from Tor and are always happy to partner on related initiatives. Online harassment causes real harm and restricts a variety of rights from freedom of expression to right to work.

This is an important and welcomed step. I stand by the colleagues at the Tor project and I proudly join them in this invitation to improve the space we work in. Let's aim for dialogue instead of harassment, but let's not be shy of calling it out when we come across it.

Thanks for this public statement. It is good to be explicit about our expectations of basic decency to one another, though it's a bit depressing that these standards aren't obvious for every thinking and feeling person already.

"Don't feed the trolls" works when they're isolated. But when they become organized mobs and plan malicous harassment campaigns, they feed themselves. Standing up to them and saying 'no', firmly, becomes necessary. Thank you for this.

Thank you for this effort. Online harassment is not being addressed, and the emotional, physical and psychological toll it has on women and sexual minorities is enormous. As a staff at a rapid response grantmaking organization, we are Urgent Action Fund take online harassment very seriously, as women and trans* human rights defenders continue to get attacked online, which further undermines their work.

I'm proud to see such strong solidarity in our community on this issue.

Folks may be interested in a recently published guide "How to Survive the Internet: Strategies for Staying Safer Online" by Yael Grauer. It discusses some ways of defending oneself against online harassment & targeting, you can find it here:

We in Tunisia were able to change our lives, lead our revolution and ouste what we once thought an undefeatable dictator using the Internet. With Freedom online, we really changed our destiny, and the destiny of our children as well. We must keep it safe an free.

Thanks for taking an important step to create coalitions who stand in solidarity against online harassment.

As is the case in an offline world, people get harassed because of gender, believes, political affiliation, etc. This is not how we should treat each other and work towards a better and more equal world.

I think that, whether you're talking about online harassment or just how to behave in an academic environment, everyone could use more education about these kinds of issues. What I see in University environments a lot are students who are otherwise good people and just aren't aware of their own nature, and other students who think the behavior is specifically targeted at them and not a general problem that the more aggressive student has. For example, male students tend to talk over female students who are, e.g., giving a talk. I've seen it a hundred times where a female student is giving a presentation and a male student interrupts, then another male student jumps in, and suddenly it's a discussion amongst the male students and the female student is standing there wondering whether she'll be allowed to speak again. I just try to: (1) educate the more aggressive students that they may not realize they're doing it, but they are; (2) keep it in my mind, since I have the exact same tendency and sometimes don't catch myself; and, (3) let the speaker know that others not letting them speak is a general problem that they should be aware of and that other students have faced, too.

My point is that education is needed all around. We need to educate people who are prone to harassing behavior about what they're doing, we need to educate people like me that are well-meaning but not as sensitive to these issues as we should be, and we need to educate people that may become targets that---while the specific instance of harassment is specific to them---the problem is a general one that a lot of people face.

Jed Crandall
Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science
University of New Mexico

I've often wished that civics courses (with a strong helping of ethical philosophy and topical cybersafety) were standard fare in US high schools. The problem is that parents (and school boards) tend to react badly when their child reports that their teacher asked them to read... almost anything a teacher might assign for a classroom discussion about ethical philosophy.

Its all very well making wonderful statements that everyone can agree with. However I don't see anything in the way of solutions being presented. And, let's face it, technology like Tor is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it makes it harder for internet bullies to locate you and a curse because it makes it harder for victims of internet bullying to identify them!

I can't help feeling that this statement is somewhat defensive given that Tor technology does make it much easier to bully people anonymously. I have no idea how you are going to prevent internet bullying at the same time as making it harder to trace or identify any of the people doing the actual bullying.

So, whereas I like the sentiment of this message, I am skeptical about what can be done to remedy the situation.

Calls for solidarity must always be called into question. Allowing a respected body to act on behalf of its community to inform them how they should be behaving is inherently a call for centralized control regardless of good intentions. This is the case here, and I find the support for this move a sign that skepticism towards authoritarian language is dwindling.

"Harassment" is a nebulous and poorly defined term. Unless you can cite a clearly written and objective law agreed upon by consensus as to what harassment truly is, saying you stand in solidarity against "online harassment" is a defacto endorsement of censorship. As an example, I have seen "harassment" being used to describe any form of contact between parties on a public forum. One can argue this is an extreme outlier but only after "harassment" is clearly defined.

Your article here creates a false equivalency between real word abuse and online "harassment". A person suffering from abuse in the real world often has bodily harm and emotional distress which is unavoidable. Online harassment, in of itself, never has bodily harm and the emotional distress is almost always avoidable by not engaging with toxic individuals. The comparison portrays a skewed version of reality in order to emotionally appeal to the audience to stop them from questioning your statements.

The sexism card is also on the table in full display. Their is a common belief that women online receive more harassment and/or receive worse harassment than then men. There has been no peer-reviewed rigorously provided body of studies confirming this to be reality. Without a source to back up the assertion, it is meaningless. Further, would it not be better these measurements are being done to prevent all harassment regardless of one's identity?

Most troubling is the line "Further, we will no longer hold back out of fear or uncertainty from an opportunity to defend a member of our community online." which implies a guilt-before-innocence mentality. If someone comes to you claiming they are being harassed, would you blindly believe them and act on their behalf to take punitive or legal action against the accused? Such an attitude will lead to false flags and will promote an environment of abuse from those trying to prevent it.

I do wish to point out though that, at least as far as I've heard, the Tor Project member who was being harrassed was being harrassed in a more serious way than normal, troll-tier "internet harrassment". From what I've heard, it could have been an organized effort, much the way arma or ioerror has been harrassed before moving to Germany (I don't remember which one it was). I could be totally wrong, but that's what I've heard.

Yes! Much better to just accept any and every claim, allegation and accusation at face value, without any scrutiny. As long as the crime or sin that is alleged to have been committed supports the correct narrative, confirms the correct biases and furthers the correct agenda, then there is no need to demand facts, evidence or proof, is there?

Worked really well in the case of the University of Virginia rape tale, didn't it? (That being only the latest well-known example of such libels, hoaxes and fabrications).

Glad to see I wasn't the only one who noticed the conspicuous absence of any description whatsoever of what actually occurred that is being described as "harassment". Incredibly, I could not find even the vaguest description anywhere in the post. Without this, we simply cannot know what actually happened and whether or not the characterization of it as "harassment" is reasonable and justified.

[NOTE: I first submitted the below post on or around December 25th, 2014. Since then, other new comments have appeared while both this one of mine as well as several similar ones have not. In my experience, this is entirely uncharacteristic behavior for this blog; in the time I have been submitting comments to this blog, the overwhelming majority of them have appeared, usually not long after my submitting them. It is difficult to imagine how comments such as the above one of mine and the similar ones I cited could be considered inappropriate or off-topic in any way. In fact, MANY of the comments of mine that WERE approved over the now-years that I've been participating here stuck to the topic-at-hand far less than the above one. Thus, it baffles the mind as to why the one above and the similar ones that I first submitted on or around this past December 25th would not be approved.]

To Mr. Crandall: what female researchers ask is a basic working environment rights. Justifying it by saying male don't notice it is just an excuse for undermining the problem. Also, postponing finding solutions for it.

I didn't intend to make excuses or postpone finding solutions. The point I was trying to make is that if you ask most males "Do you do things that are inappropriate w.r.t. to how you treat female students/researchers in your field" many will (thinking they're being honest) answer "no" when the true answer should be "yes". If we were all a little more sensitive to these issues and understood our own role in them better then finding solutions will be easier.

But it's a different issue. It's in large part one of education, since the particular engineers at these two companies who handle abuse don't understand the value of privacy and don't understand how pervasive Tor use has become in recent years. And it's also a technical problem, because we (the privacy research community) still need to work on better technical approaches that these sites can use to handle abuse while still allowing privacy for their users.

Good post and it's nice to see the name list growing, but I wonder about the inclusion of obvious pseudonyms and submissions from anons. For example, I could have created a post saying, "Please add my name, Roger Dingledine, to the list."

I guess that the worst that could happen is someone is placed on the list that doesn't want to be on, or a pseudonym is on that is then used somewhere online to harass. Is the point of signing the post supposed to be showing that there are real people who are willing to work towards the goal?

Raising awareness is generally good.
What does it mean to "not tolerate harassment"?
Especially in a Tor context, might it mean for example that the answer to (anonymous) bad speech is a flood of (anonymous or not) counterarguments and support? Or is there a backdoor being considered to trace harassing users?

Thank you for highlighting this issue. I condemn all forms of of harassment, on-line or otherwise. The right to anonymity and free speech does not confer a right to harass, insult or otherwise maltreat any other person.

Am I the only one who had hoped that Tor would refrain from making any political/social justice/otherwise biased statements?
I honestly expected a complete neutrality towards any internet activity from the project that claims support for internet freedom.
As much as I'm against any harassment, this blog entry did strike me as dissapointing.

Recent Updates

Hi! There's a new alpha release available for download. If you build Tor from source, you can download the source code for 0.3.3.2-alpha from the usual place on the website. Packages should be available over the coming weeks, with a new alpha Tor Browser release some time in February.

Remember, this is an alpha release: you should only run this if you'd like to find and report more bugs than usual.

Tor 0.3.3.2-alpha is the second alpha in the 0.3.3.x series. It introduces a mechanism to handle the high loads that many relay operators have been reporting recently. It also fixes several bugs in older releases. If this new code proves reliable, we plan to backport it to older supported release series.

Changes in version 0.3.3.2-alpha - 2018-02-10

Major features (denial-of-service mitigation):

Give relays some defenses against the recent network overload. We start with three defenses (default parameters in parentheses). First: if a single client address makes too many concurrent connections (>100), hang up on further connections. Second: if a single client address makes circuits too quickly (more than 3 per second, with an allowed burst of 90) while also having too many connections open (3), refuse new create cells for the next while (1-2 hours). Third: if a client asks to establish a rendezvous point to you directly, ignore the request. These defenses can be manually controlled by new torrc options, but relays will also take guidance from consensus parameters, so there's no need to configure anything manually. Implements ticket 24902.

Major bugfixes (netflow padding):

Stop adding unneeded channel padding right after we finish flushing to a connection that has been trying to flush for many seconds. Instead, treat all partial or complete flushes as activity on the channel, which will defer the time until we need to add padding. This fix should resolve confusing and scary log messages like "Channel padding timeout scheduled 221453ms in the past." Fixes bug 22212; bugfix on 0.3.1.1-alpha.